


it’s hidden in heartbeats, exhales and in the hope of open hands

by nomind



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Breaking Up & Making Up, Communication Failure, Don't Try This At Home, Exes, F/M, Lack of Communication, lotta cursing too, lotta tears in this fic, no but really........don't, unhealthy communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:54:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24497512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomind/pseuds/nomind
Summary: “So, just as you can’t expect your partner to read your mind, neither can you expect your prospective employer to instinctively know where your strengths and weaknesses lie.”His tone is as pointed as his words, carefully composed but decidedly aimed at her, his dark eyes gazing in her direction as if to reiterate the message. She answers him with a head tilt that hopefully conveys how over this game she already is. She hopes that out of everything to happen today, he will reflect on how amazingly terrible his career advice is, if it also doubles as relationship advice.OR a recently unemployed beth marks runs into her newly engaged ex-boyfriend at the most inopportune time
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 24
Kudos: 214





	it’s hidden in heartbeats, exhales and in the hope of open hands

**Author's Note:**

> so……i totally sat down to work on the instigator and/or warm water and then this happened???? when my hand slips, it _slips_ , apparently. title is a sleeping at last lyric.

She knows her skin must be covered by red marks by now, her favorite bra—the one with the pointless jewel and the sheer bits—digging into her skin uncomfortably by the time the pot of gnocchi boils. There’s a bird chirping outside her window like it’s a crisp morning and not the sad conclusion of the day she got sacked from her office job. It was supposed to be a temp job, but still—she can’t believe she let Candace intimidate her out of going to HR, can’t believe she let herself get baited into petty office drama. Honestly, Fuck Candace and her bleached teeth and amazing low-lights and go-getter attitude. She reaches for the bourbon.

There’s not much that would calm her down on a night like this—a little too late to hit up Ruby for an impromptu hang-out, what with the baby, a little too early to just go straight to bed. Not too long ago she’d be digging for her phone by now, ready to ask Rashid or Mario or maybe Clay, if she can put up with his annoyingly invasive roommates again, if they’re busy tonight. But she’s sworn off men, after—not _spiraling_ , as Annie likes to say, but maybe, possibly, being somewhat affected by the news that her ex-boyfriend of three years is getting married. 

Fuck him, too, for springing that news on her via Instagram post the other day while she was alone and a little drunk and melancholic and opening his page to stare at his old pictures, which is a totally normal thing to do when one hungers for a healthy sense of catharsis, no matter what Annie says. She sighs. He looked so fucking happy. Who does that? Who gets married so quickly after splitting up with her just, like, eleven months and five days ago? She knows that’s not gonna last.

Not that he can make anything last. After all, he successfully drove her away after investing three whole years of her precious twenties on that emotionally stunted asshole. 

She tried not to stare at the bride too much. _His_ bride, her mind supplies, and God, that one hurts. Should’ve been her. Should’ve been her blushing and preening under his arm, gleaming at the camera, a possessive hand on his chest, diamond sparkling on her finger, providing the obnoxious caption. She’s undeniably beautiful and looking every bit as happy as Beth imagines she would feel, had he popped the question to her instead.

They’d talked about it, once. She can still feel the recklessness she felt, the giddiness that that particular conversation sparked inside of her, when they were both drunk and sprawling on the tiles of his kitchen floor, generous with their touch and their laughter. He’d looked at her with something so sticky with love in his eyes, it made her speechless. Even more so when he brought up the topic, casual as he did anything.

“Let’s say I buy a ring soon. How would you feel about that,” he’d murmured in her hair, stroking the back of her neck without much thought. A habit, tethering her with his big hands on her body. 

“You’ve thought about that?” Her voice was nearly a whisper, scared to make a wrong move, say too much, too little.

“I think about it all the time,” he whispered back. 

She didn’t know what to say or how to respond to the longing in his voice or how to tell him what his words ignited inside of her, so she had launched herself onto him, barreling into his body with an urgency that hopefully said just the right thing. It wasn’t often that she could surprise him with her deep need for him, for closeness, as he was usually the one doing the hurried undressing, the sinking to his knees, the demanding pressing of kisses into her skin. They’d made love right then and there, first with haste and flurried passion, later languidly, taking their time like they were banking on a lifetime together.

She swallows the bitterness in her throat away with the overcooked gnocchi, drowns it out with the bourbon she’s been buying in copious amounts since, what, eleven months and four days ago? It’s a terrible combinations of flavors, and the tinged hurt swirls around in her esophagus longer than she’d hoped, the burn of the bourbon not doing its job to flush it all in one go. 

Peeling off her navy blazer, she tries to loosen her shoulders, to roll away the ache of the day and nostalgia for a different time, one in which she could count on Rio to work out the tension in her body. God, he was good, so, so good, and so unburdened by self-consciousness, always basking in his—in _their_ attunement to each other, in the pleasure they found, they created. She wishes she couldn’t recall the details, but instead she can still feel his tongue licking the spot behind her ear, feel the scratch of his beard on her clavicle, hear his quiet grunts in her neck.

She sighs again. Pulls up Mario’s chat. That’ll do.

Maybe she should’ve seen it coming, since her entire life already is one big cosmic joke, but when she finds a chair in the middle of the auditorium, placing her purse underneath it and crossing her legs, she did not expect to look up and see her ex-boyfriend across the room, on a stage no less. The surprise makes her sit up straight, her back scratching against the unidentifiable beige-green fabric of the chair. She scurries for the booklet some no doubt grossly underpaid freshman had handed her at the entrance of the Elgar Music Hall. Sure enough, on the fifth page of the booklet, his name glows right next to the details of the opening talk, _Uncovering Your Career Path: Finding yourself and your calling through the job hunt_. She scoffs at the title. 

She could have known returning to her old university was a bad idea. Annie told her as much when she’d announced her plans to go to the alumni networking event two days prior. Still, seeing him in person for the first time in eleven months and sixteen days hits different than peering at his grainy face, glowing from her phone screen in the middle of her unlit bedroom past midnight. It’s the physicality of him, the familiarity of how he carries himself as he fiddles with the mic on stage, calm, calculated movements, that makes her throat close up.

Even worse when, after a horribly awkward introduction by some faculty staff member or the other, the rasp of his voice starts fillings her eardrums, drowning out any thought that isn’t centered on him, on how much she’s missed him. She thought she wasn’t doing too bad, getting over him, all things considered, but seeing him in the flesh? Having a clear view of the lines of his face, the ink on his throat? She’s right back to where she was, eleven months and sixteen days ago. Hung up on him like he was a fucking lifeline, not a deadweight.

She shakes herself out of her reverie, turning her attention to the words leaving his lush lips, the ones she’d bite and kiss and _devour_ any chance she got, back when those chances littered her days. He’s droning on about knowing your strengths and taking responsibility for your weaknesses, something that makes a cackle work its way out of her mouth, remembering just how good he was at that throughout the course of their relationship. Or, wasn’t.

The bland, oval space of the auditorium is quiet save for his booming voice and the occasional cough from an audience member, so the sound carries to the stage, even as she tries to muffle it, covering it up with a fist to her mouth and a clearing of her throat. The auditorium must be housing, what, over two hundred people attending her ex-boyfriend’s motivational speech, all here with good intentions or faded hope or plans to get drunk on the free wine that’ll be served later, but his eyes find her in the crowd nonetheless. 

She has to give it to him, his shock must be invisible to anyone in the room who hasn’t seen him grumpy at the sound of the six-thirty alarm, who hasn’t traced his eyebrows with a delicate and stubborn finger in the early morning light, who hasn’t mapped out the miniscule tremors in his façade when he’d read the news or listen to his mother complain about fighting with his aunt on the phone. She clocks it anyway, across the five rows of chairs between her and the stage.

His surprise quickly, predictably, morphs into vicious pleasure, which he can hide from anyone but her just as smoothly. The tiny tilt to the corner his lips tells her to brace for war and thunder, reminding her immediately just how heated their arguments could get. It’s the same gesture he’d make right before harshening his tone, losing all of the mellow honey she grew so accustomed to.

“So, just as you can’t expect your partner to read your mind, neither can you expect your prospective employer to instinctively know where your strengths and weaknesses lie.” 

His tone is as pointed as his words, carefully composed but decidedly aimed at her, his dark eyes gazing in her direction as if to reiterate the message. She answers him with a head tilt that hopefully conveys how over this game she already is. She hopes that out of everything to happen today, he will reflect on how amazingly terrible his career advice is, if it also doubles as relationship advice.

“It doesn’t end there. Your employer can’t guess what your needs are and how you wish to grow within the company, so it is important to not only know these things about yourself, but also to be able and willing to communicate them clearly,” he continues.

She scoffs, looking away. He’s one to talk about communication, always leaving her grasping for clues at his stilted behavior. She remembers quite vividly how nonverbal he would get at times, seemingly out of the blue, making her read the stiffness of his body as punishment or disinterest instead of giving her concrete pointers as to what had set him off this time. 

What else was she to do besides return his coldness with even longer bouts of freezing? Fighting fire with fire, fighting ice with ice, she would count on her hard-worn, deep-seated stubbornness to power her through icing him out even longer than he did her, aiming for a longevity that would hopefully remind him he’s not the only one in control. It was a harrowing challenge—usually she didn’t last two hours before a desperate longing for his closeness would come clawing at her, hitting deeper than her need to be right, to win, but her fierce determination would make her deter his attention and avoid his touch for days on end. 

Chills run down her spine at the memory of her silent tears soaking the pillow on the nights she skittered away from his touch, taking every ounce of willpower inside herself to pull away from his warm body lying next to her, the soft calls of her name in the midnight hour. 

The hurt in his pleas—hurt she is now convinced was completely feigned, designed to make her cave and lose, be the first to admit defeat and curl up into him—sometimes resurfaces when she doesn’t pay attention, the reminder of what his pain sounded like swelling inside of her at the most inopportune times. She once cried in the frozen foods isle of a Fine ‘n Frugal when she heard a baby cry so unapologetically desperately it brought back far too many memories of his hoarse, timid begging. 

She feels tears sting at her eyes. 

No, no, no, _no_ , there will be no crying at alumni events, she reminds herself. Not even if the memory of him reaching out for her, a broad hand tentatively placed on her shoulder which she would then have to crudely and promptly shake off while fighting the sobs trying to make their way out of her chest wraps around her like she’s right there in that bed again, wanting nothing more than to bury her face in the crook of his neck, but resisting the urge at any cost.

A tear slips out. Somewhere over the sound of his low, raspy voice, she can hear her heart drop, shatter, shriek. She closes her eyes. He can’t see her like this, can’t know she is still in any way affected by him, not with him up a stage with a ring on his finger.

Heat travels to her face, the hurt bursting from her insides where she thought she hid it so well, all masked and taped and hastily glued back together and shoved down the deepest parts of herself that should never meet with sunlight, if she has any say in it. As the minutes pass in such a crudely slow manner, it becomes clear to her that she does _not_ have any say in how her beat-up heart behaves. It moves, tips over, and spills its contents, and she can’t stop the tears—not now, not in his bed after a day of silent torture.

She abruptly swipes her purse from the floor and starts the awkward journey from her spot in the middle of the sixth row, with whispered apologies and the appropriate embarrassed look on her face as she brushes past sets of knees. There can’t ever be any subtility or grace to these things, getting out of the middle of a filled auditorium, or escaping one’s ex. But the discomfort is nothing but a hum in the background as her insides scream for the freedom to collapse and break apart that lies behind those big, wooden doors. 

She breezes past the students posted at the exits, young ones that can’t be a day over twenty, and stumbles out of the room with relief so big it sends more tears down her reddened cheeks. The people roaming the hallway—a relaxed janitor whistling a tune, a group of students huddled around a laptop and a gaggle of opened notebooks by the couches near the stairs, a man in suit that quickly averts his eyes after meeting hers—don’t pay close attention to her as she practically runs to the bathroom. 

Blasting through the bathroom doors and immediately making her way over to the sinks, she safely bawls her eyes out, not caring how much noise she makes or how obvious her state of despair would be to any onlooker. Gripping the sink in the far left corner of the bathroom with both her hands, she leans towards the mirror. How the fuck can she still hurt so much over him? And how the fuck can she hurt so much over him while he apparently hurts so little he can just marry someone else so soon? 

She misses him so much. The truth of that sentiment has been boiling on the inside of her for months now, always threatening to spill over. She tries to downplay it in front of Annie and Ruby, feeling that while an appropriate mourning period was understandable, she should be way past heartbreak by now. While her pubescent little sister may buy her put-on airiness and take her casual sex with assorted hook-ups as evidence for just how _over him_ she is, she knows her best friend can see it in her eyes. Fuck, why can’t she just move on? 

With trembling hands she wipes away the mascara running down her face with a wetted paper towel, the rough sensations of the paper making her scrub harder, more, needing to feel something other than him, something other than how she doesn’t have him anymore.

It doesn’t take her long to figure out her next course of action—buy something warm and liquid to soothe her body, and get the hell out of here, so she can go figure out the glue and the shards of heart she finds in the privacy of her own home. She carefully peels herself away from the sink and, with a steadying breath, sets for the cafeteria.

The hot to-go cup warming her hands—hot chocolate, in July, because fuck it and fuck this day and fuck Rio—does an admirable job in grounding her, calming her, right up until the haunting quiet of the cafeteria littered with frail, cheery green plastic chairs and artificial eucalyptus plants gets disturbed by applause dampened by the auditorium walls. She doesn’t know how fast to get out of her chair, spilling her drink over her hands and the legs of her pants in her hurry to get out of here.

Just as she makes a break for it, another door opens, and a bunch of tired-looking students come spilling out, chattering to each other and blocking her path to the exits. She quickly decides that between the group of students and the people who not only sat through thirty minutes of her ex-boyfriend’s bullshit speech but also applauded him for it, she has a better chance of leaving the building unscathed if she finds a back entrance. 

Much like the auditorium, the Elgar Music Hall is shaped like an oval, and while she did take a musicology class with Stan one semester in her second year in this building, she doesn’t remember its exact lay-out. She vaguely recollects getting lost one time and just giving up, dropping to the floor to lament the state of her life and skipping the tutorial. 

This place is just as much a maze today as it was that day, and after she ends up in the same corridor in the back of the building a third time, her instincts are much the same as all those years ago. She sinks to the floor, leaning against the wall by the staircase, and closes her eyes. The tears resurface quickly, and with ease.

Unlike last time, a body drops down next to her.

His scent hits her first, sends new waves of tears, makes her clench her eyes shut even more. She doesn’t even need to open them to be sure. He doesn’t say anything as the sobs suddenly tear from her chest with force, making her shudder and hug her arms close to her chest. After a minute she can’t take it anymore, can’t hold back, and it’s like she’s right there in his bed again, only this time she doesn’t have the strength to pull back from him any longer.

With the sobs ripping through her body and her eyes still closed, she slowly sinks into his shoulder. The tears stream, absolutely spill from her like a merciless monsoon, taking over her thoughts. She can’t feel a thing except the wetness in her eyes, the steady presence of his body.

She thinks of all the times she would lie next to him, her pillow wet, her body rigid, needing nothing more than his touch. Everything inside of her screaming at her to roll over and find comfort in his embrace, to press close, even just for a little bit. Just for a little while, just to get tugs of air she needs, just to get her lungs to fill again, taking in his scent, her nose pressed into his skin. Nothing was safer than the crook of his neck, where she could finally lay her head. But so many times she denied herself, afraid the safety would turn sour on her the next day.

She quiets after a while, the tears now finding low tide, as she takes in deep fills of his scent with a shuddering breath. 

Her breath still trembles, wobbly like a deer learning how to walk, when she finally opens her eyes. He stares at the wall they’re facing, exhaustion set in his bones, his face. She sighs, hurting for him, for the tiredness she can tell has been dragging on him for weeks, if not longer. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, clenching her fists to prevent herself from reaching out and stroking the lines of his face, easing his tension the way she would before. He whips towards her so fast she sits up, leaving his shoulder to no longer be her buoy and sit on its own.

He sends her a look filled with unbelief. 

“What?” 

There is a hoarseness to his voice that tastes just like her earlier wails.

“You look so tired,” she responds, eying the bags underneath his eyes with worry on her features. “Why do you look so tired?”

He swallows, eyes not wavering from hers, big like he’s barely processing her words. Then he frowns, looking at the floor.

“Haven’t been sleeping,” he admits. She nods to herself, her thoughts confirmed. 

It’s quiet for a minute. A quiet lathered with a strange sense of peace, peace she can’t place, peace that has no business settling into her skin. 

He clears his throat. The rumble is so familiar she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. 

“Do you remember how you’d stay awake with me any time I couldn’t sleep?”

Her lips curl. “I do. Do you remember how fussy that made you?”

He grins at her, making her smile widen. “Fussy? Nah, that don’t sound like me.” She openly laughs now, remembering exactly how much he could throw a tantrum over her keeping him company in the wee hours of the morning if she woke up to find him staring at the ceiling, sometimes rubbing his back, sometimes talking to him about anything and everything, sometimes crawling on top of him and riding him until the sweat dripped down their bodies and their moans grew hoarse.

Silence returns to the corridor as they sit in their exhaustion. She feels raw after the tears, like she’s been scraped to the bone, but lighter, too, more clarity in her vision than she’s had in months. Eleven months and sixteen days, she guesses. She sighs again.

“What did we do,” she asks out loud.

“Why did we do it,” he adds.

“Yeah,” she mutters back. That’s a good one. Then she remembers something, something that infuses the hurt with something unnamable and cruel.

“Congratulations on your engagement.” Her voice is unsteady, but at least she got the words out. That’s more than she expected. He turns to her with brows set tight.

“What?”

“I saw your Instagram post, Rio,” she tells him, voice resigned. It’s over. He’s engaged. Before that post, she could silently foster reckless hope for a reunion, her daydreams latching onto the possibility of getting back together, suckling on it in the lonely quiet of her bedroom at night. Now—now there’s only the familiarity of that dull ache, the reminder that she’s not his and he’s certainly not hers anymore.

“What Instagram post?”

“The one with you and your future wife.” She flinches at the accusation in her tone. It really has no right to be pointed in his direction.

“Future wife… You know I would’ve bet my whole life that was gonna be you.” He shakes his head, looking sadder than she has ever seen him before. She wonders if this is what she would have seen, had she turned around in the middle of the night, letting the ice leave her body, facing him after shutting him out for hours. Days.

“Rio,” she says, voice soft, full of—of something. “You can’t say things like that. Not when you’re marrying someone else.”

He shakes his head again, brows furrowed. “Am I? What makes you so sure?”

“Stop playing dumb with me,” she chastises, “I know what I saw. A big, shining rock on a pretty girl’s finger while she’s wrapped around your arm? The caption? _Excited to start this new chapter?_ Don’t lie. Not to me, not about this.”

“Shit, that’s what makes you think I’m engaged? Elizabeth, that was me and Gretchen Zoroda teaming up to start a grief counselling group in Detroit.”

She stares. Starts laughing, thinking of herself all bent out of shape in her empty bed at night, convinced that the man she still loves had found someone new, someone better, someone easier to love. He gives her a small smile, moves a hand to tuck her hair out of her face in a gesture so familiar the tears come spilling, too.

He tugs her close, envelops her with his arms. 

“Baby, why are you crying,” he whispers in her hair. 

“I just miss you so much,” she sobs, unable to stop the new onset of tears, so deliriously happy to have him close again, so starkly sad at the uncertainty of how long she gets to have him. 

“All the time,” she adds, her voice broken, muffled in his chest, needing him to know.

“I miss you too,” he tells her, rubbing her back. She lets the words fall on her like the relief of pitter-patter of rain on a hot summer day. Lets them cloak her, swaddle around her body like a safe cocoon. 

“I hate not being with you.”

“Me too, baby.” The exhaustion spills from his lips, filling the words with a heaviness that tells her much.

“Then why did we break up,” she cries, still hiding her face from him. He sighs. 

“You know why.”

“Tell me,” she demands, needing to hear it again, needing the reminder.

“Nah. You tell me.”

She looks up, untangling herself from his embrace with every ounce of strength she can find, somewhere in the glue-filled pieces of heart. It’s so him, to ask this of her. So him, to want her to take responsibility for what she did. She swallows, eyes leaving his. 

“Because we don’t—because I couldn’t—because we never—” “Breathe, baby.” “—because I didn’t know how to tell you what I needed, how much I loved you, how much it hurt me when you grew cold on me.”

She slowly finds the courage to meet his eyes—vibrant orbits, glowing messily, plenty of hurt pooling front and center.

“I used to hate it when you would freeze me out, ignore me. Didn’t even wanna fuckin’ look at me. Like you couldn’t stand the sight of me.” His voice is hoarse. “That really hurt me.”

She nods, trying to meet the hurt in his eyes, his voice, his words head-on, no matter how much it scares her. She fights the familiar urge to run, hide, numb, anything not to see what she did. Anything not to see his love and his pain.

“I’m sorry for doing those things, for hurting you,” she starts. “I was so scared of losing you, of you getting tired of me, of getting hurt. I didn’t know how else to respond.” And then she chased him away anyway. Fuck.

“Please don’t ever, ever do that again,” he tells her. “I can’t deal with that no more, okay, baby? Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” she chokes out, shocked by how much he sounds like—like he’d take her back if she did that. The thought alone explodes inside of her like a sun setting for destruction.

They bathe in the quiet, lost in old hurt, maybe in new redemption. It’s a silence that is safe, unlike so many others they’ve shared in the past.

“I don’t know if I know how to tell you what I’m feeling or what I need,” she admits after a while. If she doesn’t tell him now, pretends like one conversation in a sterile hallway can fix layers of pain and stabs of wrongdoing, she knows she will lose him again. Hurt him again. 

“Then tell me that, instead of not letting me in. Tell me, and we can try to figure it out together. Just don’t shut me out again.” His voice so low, his eyes so full, his words sound surprisingly much like a plea.

She nods slowly. 

“Rio,” she breathes, hope on her tongue. “What are you saying?” 

He gives her a small smile. Takes her hands in his, starts rubbing her palms.

“Elizabeth, I want to love you. But you have to show me how.”

She closes her eyes. Sits there, hands in his, her fractured, peeling heart beating fast. She feels him move closer, closer, closer, ‘till his breath hits her face. The soft press of his lips to hers feel like relief so heavy it pulls her straight into him, making her wrap her arms around his neck. 

He shifts back, gently.

“Will you?”

She opens her eyes. His face hovers so close to hers. She watches him swallow. Copies the movement, fear coursing through her.

“But what if you do, what if I let myself grow familiar with your love and then one day you’ll see who I really am and you won’t love me anymore?” 

Her voice is a tremor, her body no better. She’s not so sure the old adage that naming your biggest fears makes them smaller holds the truth she wants it to.

He tilts his head. Stares right back into her widened eyes. Gives her so much calm.

“Baby, you need to trust me. You need to trust that I will still love you even when you’re dark, even when the bad sides show. Please, Elizabeth. Let me love you. I wanna love you. Wanna do it right this time, wanna make you happy, wanna be with you. Let me do that. Let me be that for you.” 

Blinking hard, she feels her mouth open in a gasp. Shudders once. Twice. Nods once. Nods again. Can’t stop the bobbing of her head as she collapses in his arms, presses her face right into the crook of his neck.

“Yes, please, yes.” She must be soaking his shirt with her tears, but he makes no movement to stop her, just keeps his arms locked tight around her. This time the tears are gentle, sweet with promise. She can feel him shake under her. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, for the times she denied him what he needed, for the times she didn’t trust him with herself, for the times she couldn’t see past herself to believe his love for her. “I’m gonna do better,” she vows, breath uneven.

“Come here,” he urges, voice full and hoarse, just the way she loves. She perks up, peers up at him from under her lashes. 

“Kiss me,” he demands. God, how much she’s missed his demands.

“No.”

She smiles. God, how she’s missed not giving him what he wants so easily, making him work for it. He pouts, but the crinkle by his eyes tells her he knows she’ll give in sooner rather than later.

“No? You don’t wanna kiss me?” 

She finds so much comfort in his mocking tone and matching cocky smirk. She shakes her head.

“What do you want, then?” 

He gently takes her bottom lip between two fingers, eyes glued to his movements. He knows exactly what he’s doing, knows exactly how to make her give in, but she can still see right through him. 

She promised him honesty, so honesty is what she’ll give him, the weight of the truth making the words spill out of her mouth with surprising ease.

“I want you to take me home.”

He meets her eyes. Swallows audibly. Clears his throat.

“Okay. Yeah—yeah, let’s go home.” 

Later, after she’s cried on the threshold of his apartment, and again, when her face finds the crook of his neck again, lying together all tangled-up in his sheets, she finally dares to feel the safety of his embrace, finally feels the truth setting in her bones.

They’re not lost. They can build something together again.

**Author's Note:**

> i love giving fake career / relationship advice!!!! pls don’t listen to me!!! im a single college student w/ no job or dating prospects whatsoever!!!!! also i couldn’t resist the dead to me reference, soz


End file.
